beyond left and right but against the center

Along with the more geopolitical aspects, the Fourth Political Theory lies at the heart of Eurasianism, and constitutes its philosophical core. Drawing its roots from France's New Right, the Third Way, the German Conservative Revolution, and thinkers as diverse as Heidegger, Boaz, Evola, and de Benoist, the Fourth Political Theory could be summed up by what Alain Soral calls "la gauche du travail et la droite des valeurs" ("the worker’s left and the moral right"). It is important to note that, just like Alain Soral, Dugin rejects ethnocentrism. The Fourth Political Theory rejects not only liberalism (capitalism), but also communism (socialism) and fascism, preferring a blend of the two non-capitalistic systems in order to prevent each one’s particular shortcomings.

Even though it believes in multipolarity, Russia is central to Eurasianism, as is the goal of creating a "European Space," encompassing both Europe and Russia. The objective is clearly to shift the balance of global power from Washington to Moscow, although Dugin denies this in an interview with Arktos published at the end of the book.

What struck me on arriving in the US was the interest in and presence of other cultures, especially in relation to spirituality. Spiritual, New Age and occult centers (or at least bookstores) existed and seemed relatively vibrant. Religion was also far more important than in England, whether that was Christianity, Judaism, Tibetan Buddhism, or something else. There was (and of course still is) a big Chinatown, where Chinese was spoken (London’s is tiny). I practiced Kung fu in the early morning at a park in Chinatown and went for tea at a Chinese place afterward; I went to read in a French cafe that was always empty and the owners were actually French; I went to the spiritual and occult bookstores; to the museums, to Japanese events with my Japanese friends; and so on. Moving to the US, my life was steeped much more consciously in the archaic and the “Traditional” than in the much older culture of England.

Capitalism, of course, always seizes on what is different and exciting, and repackages it for the mainstream, often destroying the culture-creating roots as a consequence. But, if we leave aside this aspect, and get back to the people, America’s history is one with as much depth as anywhere else. Indeed, while Britain and Europe ape the most crass aspects of the USA, Americans often look to something more integral.

I defend the plurality of civilizations, the absence of the universal (Western) pattern of social development. I strongly oppose any kind of xenophobia and nationalism as the bourgeois artificial and essentially Modern construction. I am not communist nor Marxist because I refuse the materialism of any kind and deny the progress. So much more correct to describe my views as Fourth Political Theory and traditionalism.

Mao was right affirming that socialism should be not exclusively proletarian but also peasant and based on the ethnic traditions. It is closer to the truth than universalist industrial internationalist version represented by trotskyism. But I think that sacred part in Maoism was missed or underdeveloped. Its links with Confucianism and Taoism were weak. Maoism is too Modern for me. For China it would be best solution to preserve the socialism and political domination of national-communist party (as today) but develop more sacred tradition – Confucianismand Taoism. It is rather significant that ideas of Heidegger are attentively explored now by hundreds of Chinese scientists. I think Fourth Political Theory could fit to contemporary China best of all.

never getting to the core of things – "We [USA] are not good at democratizing countries". But then again, who in the world asked you to do that "for us"? This question has to be answered honestly—as a matter of fact, it is Paikin not asking this that proves the show to be sold in advance;

replacing truth for political correctness – "Liberal democracies don't fight each other". The idea is mischievous at least for three reasons:

the problem with this assumption relies not only in the accuracy of the claim itself (there has been wars between democracies), but also in the fact that its credo is precisely what leads to war against other kinds of regime, who are considered intrinsically a crime punishable by war; therefore, the claim recognizes its prejudicial vision of the Other as a phenomenon and legitimizes the necessity of their killing.

Vladimir Putin's name is known throughout the world. Alexander Dugin's name, not so much. But to people in the know, Alexander Dugin is a very important name, as the Russian public intellectual says what Putin thinks. The Agenda examines the man who has been called "Putin's brain." Does two personalities really know each other? How close they are? What is the extent of Dugin's influence. Political analyst Michael Millerman the translator of many Dugin's works into American tries to answer those questions. But the question rests: is the Fourth Political Theory advocated by Dugin really affect Russian politics? Judging on the influence of Eurasian ideas it should.

Russia, for its part, is seeking to implement a new geopolitical axis with Beijing and Tehran, a factor of multipolar balance of power opposed to the Atlanticist endeavors. The Chinese, after long procrastination, are no longer hiding their desire to “de- Americanize the world.” Yet, the future of Russia, a great power, albeit still fragile, in a similar way as China, with its own inner contradictions, remains uncertain. Countries of Eastern Europe are still hesitant as to which path to follow—all the more so as Germany is seeking to replace the former USSR as a federating factor in Eastern and Central Europe.

We are witnessing a restructuring of the forms of world domination. The United States, with its financial markets, its armed forces, its language and its culture industries remains the leading world power. Its economic impact, however, is decreasing bit by bit (its share of global industrial output has fallen from 45% in 1945 to 17.5% today), with the dollar representing today only a third of world trade in comparison to more than a half in 2000. The process of “de- dollarization” has already and simultaneously begun, in oil and gas trading and on the monetary front. Russia and China, emulated by other Third World countries, are using more and more their national currencies in trade and investment. The project of trade in energy and raw materials, without resorting to the dollar, is beginning to take shape. Meanwhile, the purchase of gold is gathering momentum. The advent of a new international reserve currency, designed to replace the dollar, seems inevitable.

There are more modern democracies in the world than there were 50 years ago, but confidence in the institutions of those democracies - parliaments, elections, politicians - appears to be waning. How much trust do citizens have in the hallowed symbols of democratic rule? Are we confident enough to think that democracies should be established in countries which have remained immune to its charms like Russia and China? Francis Fukuyama, Alexander Dugin and Ivan Krastev join Steve Paikin to debate the current state of Western democracies and how differing perceptions about them are causing geopolitical conflicts.

From our examination thus far, it should be obvious that there are too many misconceptions about Alexander Dugin’s thought being circulated among Right-wingers. These misconceptions are being used to dismiss the value of his work and deceive members of Right-wing groups into believing that Dugin is a subversive intellectual who must be rejected as an enemy. Many other important Right-wing intellectuals have been similarly dismissed among certain circles, due to practices of a kind of in-group gleichschaltung, closing off any thinker who is not seen as readily agreeable. It is important to overcome such tendencies and support an intellectual expansion of the Right, which is the only way to overcome the present liberal-egalitarian hegemony. People need to take a more careful and unbiased look at Dugin’s works and ideas, as with other controversial thinkers. Of course, Dugin is not without flaws and imperfections (nor is any other thinker), but these flaws can be overcome when his thought is balanced with that of other intellectuals, especially the Revolutionary Conservatives and the New Rightists.

According to Alexander Dugin, the twenty-first century will be defined by the conflict between Eurasianists and Atlanticists. The Eurasianists defend the need for every people and culture on Earth to be allowed to develop in its own way, free of interference, and in accordance with their own particular values. Eurasianists thus stand for tradition and for the blossoming variety of cultures, and a world in which no single power holds sway over all the others. Opposing them are the Atlanticists. They stand for ultra-liberalism in both economics and values, stopping at nothing to expand their influence to every corner of the globe, unleashing war, terror, and injustice on all who oppose them, both at home and abroad. This camp is represented by the United States and its allies around the world, who seek to maintain America’s unipolar hegemony over the Earth. The Eurasianists believe that only a strong Russia, working together with all those who oppose Atlanticism worldwide, can stop them and bring about the multipolar world they desire. This book introduces their basic ideas. Eurasianism is on the rise in Russia today, and the Kremlin’s geopolitical policies are largely based on its tenets, as has been acknowledged by Vladimir Putin himself. It is reshaping Russia’s geopolitics, and its influence is already changing the course of world history.

From the moment of its inception in the 1920s, Eurasianism has always opposed the global domination of the West, European universalism, and supported the uniqueness of the Russian civilization. Therefore, Eurasianism is, indeed, an anti-Western ideology in the sense that it rejects the Western society’s right to impose its criteria of good and evil as the universal norm. Russia is an independent Orthodox-Eurasian civilization, rather than the periphery of Europe, insisted Eurasianists, following their ideological predecessors, the Slavophiles, along with other Russian conservatives.

Gradually, Eurasianism was enriched with the methods of classic geopolitics that were based upon the dualism of the Land and Sea civilizations. Englishman Halford Mackinder introduced this concept in the first half of the twentieth century; it was further developed by American strategists such as Nicholas Spykman and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Here, Russia serves as the core of the Land civilization, Eurasia’s Heartland, and is thus doomed to carry out a centuries-old battle against the Anglo-Saxon world. In the past, its core was the British Empire, and, from the second half of the twentieth century onward, this was the United States. Therefore, Eurasianists oppose Western hegemony, American expansionism, and Liberal values and support the distinct Russian civilization, religion, and tradition. Furthermore, Eurasianists not only oppose the West, but also Russia’s own Westernizers and moderates: Liberals, first and foremost.

In Ernst Jünger’sIn Ernst Jünger’s writings, four great Figures appear successively, each corresponding to a quite distinct period of the author’s life. They are, chronologically, the Front Soldier, the Worker, the Rebel, and the Anarch. Through these Figures one can divine the passionate interest Jünger has always held toward the world of forms. Forms, for him, cannot result from chance occurrences in the sensible world. Rather, forms guide, on various levels, the ways sensible beings express themselves: the “history” of the world is above all morphogenesis. As an entomologist, moreover, Jünger was naturally inclined to classifications. Beyond the individual, he identifies the species or the kind. One can see here a subtle sort of challenge to individualism: “The unique and the typical exclude one another,” he writes. Thus, as Jünger sees it, the universe is one where Figures give epochs their metaphysical significance. In this brief esposition, I would like to compare and contrast the great Figures identified by Jünger.

We can also hear the words of some indigenous masters from Brazil, saying that each person has the responsibility of making the intercultural dialogue happen inside themselves, because we can only recognize the differences as being both unsurmontable and yet all too natural. As such, this dialogue occurs only in a situation of double-endedly openness:

open to the culture of the Other, whom we recognize as being not an Object, but a full Subject of his own, having, then, as much right to existence as we do;

being entirely open to our own culture, or being open to it in its entirety, because otherwise there is no way to be fully recognized as a Subject in turn, and demandSujbec. This second point has two meanings to be conjugated:

a) it is almost impossible to be fully recognized as a Subject by the Other without an inner understanding of such;

b) it is not possible to know what to want when one does not recognize themselves as a full Subject; in this case, one easily "swallows" anything that is given to him without further thinking, becoming, by acting so, a mere Object.

The field of IR is extremely interesting and multidimensional. In general, the discipline is much more promising than many think. I think that there is a stereometry today in IR, in which we can distinguish a few axes right away.

The first, most traditional axis is realism – the English school – liberalism.

Like Dugin, one discovers in Heidegger, whom Dugin routinely calls “the greatest thinker,” a combination of traditional philosophical interests with self-consciously modern concerns. But again, like Dugin, Heidegger was a reactionary modernist, someone who combatted modernity by underlining its defects and shallowness and by trying to prove that the modern enterprise was headed in a very bad direction. Heidegger tried to do this without returning to metaphysical assumptions that he believed belonged to a vanished past. This, too, as in the case of Dugin, is not as simple as it would first appear. There is something backward-looking in both thinkers, as the past is for them a source of creativity. This is totally different from the kind of “cultural conservative” this writer has often encountered: a tedious eccentric who manifests his “conservatism” by making himself the butt of gentle jokes. Such a person may frequent clubs where tea and crumpets are served or may introduce himself as a liturgical traditionalist with an ostentatious interest in Gothic architecture, but he is, above all, an expert at staying out of controversy that could threaten his career or social calendar.

In today's world, the impression is growing that politics has ended – at least the politics that we used to know. Liberalism stubbornly fought it out with its political enemies, which had offered alternative recipes – with conservatism, monarchism, traditionalism, fascism, socialism, and communism – and, finally, at the end of the 20th century, it beat them all. It would have been logical to surmise that politics would become liberal, while all of liberalism's opponents, having turned up on the periphery, would begin to rethink strategies and to form a new front: the periphery against the centre (Alain de Benoist). But at the beginning of the 21st century everything followed a different script.

In Political Sciences, the concept of totalitarianism is subtended in communist and fascist ideologies, who openly proclaim the superiority of the whole (class and society in communism and socialism; State, in fascism; race in national-socialism) over the private (individual).

They oppose the liberal ideology, to whom, on the contrary, the private (individual) is put above the whole (as if this whole could not be understood as is). Liberalism then combats totalitarianism in general, including that of communism and fascism. But, by doing so, the very term "totalitarianism" reveals its connection with the liberal ideology–and neither communists nor fascists would agree with the term. Thus, everyone who uses the word "totalitarianism" is a liberal, independently of their awareness about it.

At a first glance, the picture is perfectly clear and leaves no room to ambiguity–communism is the first totalitarianism, fascism is the second. And liberalism is its antithesis, as such denying the whole and placing the private above it. If we stop here, we will recognize that the Modern Era developed only two totalitarian ideologies–communism (socialism) and fascism (nazism), with their variations and nuances. But liberalism, as a political theory that appeared before the other two and outlasted them, could not be called totalitarian. Hence, the expression "third totalitarianism", which suggests a stretching of the nomenclature of the totalitarian ideologies, including liberalism, makes no sense.